On Dogs and Adoption

I wrote the following for my company's internal newsletter. For lack of any other blogging on my part, I thought I'd post it and catch everyone up. Sorry my blog is so dog-centric lately. Uh, I'm sure it'll pass soon.

My love affair with dogs began when I was… well, born, I suppose. When you’re born into a family with dogs, you really don’t have much of a say in the matter. From the time that I could recognize those living around me as the members of my family unit, our dogs were immediately regarded as an integral part of it.



And what good dogs the Weber Family had. They played, jumped, swam, sledded, loved, and misbehaved right alongside me and my brothers. I dressed the little one in baby doll clothes (to my brothers’ chagrin), and my mom carried the German Shepherd up and down the stairs when she became too old and feeble to walk them herself. We grew into adults, and they lived out their years. Katie (with me, above), Pepper, Gizmo, and Daisy, and only the last one remains.



After college I asked God many times just how long he expected me to live without a dog of my own; my “family unit” felt incomplete. Finally, last May, I purchased my first home. This now meant that I could store my Christmas tree in the garage, play in my yard, paint the walls whatever color I wished, and, at long last, have a dog again.

On one random sunny day this February, my roommate, Christine, and I drove down 33 to the Woodford County Humane Society, where I first met Elsa. Within an hour, Elsa was in my backseat on her way back to Nicholasville and her new home.

A few months later, after she convinced me, Christine brought a 70 pound Golden Retriever, Big Ben, into the fold. Our house is crazy, indeed, but the dogs love each other and play like champs. “Well, that’s it. Two dogs is plenty,” I would think contentedly.

Then he arrived... practically right on our doorstep. It was the curly-haired little rascal we had seen running around our neighborhood for a few days. He was so cute, we assumed he had to belong to someone. Until that morning when he greeted us, fur still soaked through from the particularly heinous thunderstorms the night before. No collar. No discernable home to go to. I looked at Christine with tears already spilling down my cheeks, “Can we please bring him inside?”

Due to an odd holiday schedule that kept the Humane Society closed longer than normal, we ended up keeping him for two whole days. In that time, he fit right in like a long lost member of the family. He played with Elsa and Ben, and he slept by my bedside at night. He traveled to the office with me each day, riding on my lap in the car and sleeping under my chair when he wasn’t off greeting everyone else. Everyone fell in love with him, and teasingly said to me, “You are so keeping this dog.” I was adamant in my practicality, however. We have two dogs already, “What are we? The crazy dog ladies?”

However, the day I dropped him off at the Humane Society, I started to plan how I would I adopt him if he wasn’t claimed. After much thought and many conversations, my head now agrees with my heart. He is a part of my mad little unconventional family, and it’s time to bring him home. The adoption will be final this week, and with my boss already giving his blessing, he will become the first ever Cre8tive Group office dog.

Update: We named this dog Pepper on a whim, because of his coloring. He had just come into the house, we didn't think he was staying, and we wanted to call him something - anything. As you'll note above, my family had a German Shepherd for 14 years named Pepper and I'm not that unoriginal/lazy to just keep it for him too. This little guy will receive a new, cooler name, to be announced later.